Stan Gotlieb's
"Letters from México"The Bye-bye Blues
Photography by Diana Ricci
An Easter pageant in Tlacolula, near Oaxaca.We're out of here! Our bags are almost packed, except for a few last minute gifts for the kids and the grandkids. Arrangements have been made for forwarding my e-mail to my US service. We've run out of cereal and other staples. We've found someone to cover the phone bill and the rent. Instructions have been given for watering the plants. The laptop's battery is fully charged.
What I like to think of as our normal home life is getting disrupted. For a few months, we will be living in a faraway land, whose customs and culture are familiar but weird: California. Diana has a summer cottage there, on land she shares with her oldest daughter and her family, so at least we will not be strangers. But we will suffer from a heavy dose of culture shock.
Last night, in the Teatro Macedonio Alcala, a beautifully restored 19th century opera house complete with baroque seminude bas reliefs and four tiers of horseshoe balconies, they showed a live broadcast of the National Opera Company performing "La Traviata" on a giant screen: free. The night before that, we saw "Gandhi": free. Today, we will attend the weekly band concert under the giant trees of the zocalo: free. The list goes on, but the point is clear: Mexico supports the arts, and brings performances to the people for little or nothing. In Oaxaca, enjoying art is a right, not a privilege.
We are going to have to get used to frozen food again, and unripe fruits and vegetables. We're going to have to deal with lots of styrofoam. Most of our foods will come from supermarkets, where we will only be able to talk to real human beings at the checkout counter, or if we ring the bell for service. Bar codes do not allow for a mutually satisfactory bargaining session.
Our expenses are going to skyrocket. No more $1.75 first run movies, 15-cent bus fares, or 50-cent beers; no three-course meals with beverage for $1.50, or sidewalk cafe coffees for six bits.
We're going to miss the friends we have made here. We will be glad to see the friends we left behind, and our tied-down unable-to-travel families, but we will, in some corner of our minds and souls, know that we are just visitors; that soon or late, we will leave and they will stay.
I will have to spend endless time on the Internet cruising Mexican sources in order to keep up with what is going on down here. The US press does 1/10th the job of covering Latin America that the Mexican press does covering the US.
So, you are probably asking yourself by now, why do they go North if they feel the way they do? Why, indeed?
We are both travelers, and changes of scene energize us. We just can't sit still very long before we are casting our eyes on one destination or another. We are as drawn by the culture shock as we are repelled by it.
Diana wants to see her kids and grandkids. I have business to attend to, involving a book that is in the works, and other publishing possibilities.
The US is a good place to get stuff we can't get here, like blueberries and lemons, socks and sneakers with velcro fastenings, computer peripherals and supplies, and cheap phone calls.
I will have an opportunity to read and comment on the way the US press treats issues of great importance to Mexicans: immigration, importation of Mexican goods, monetary and economic policy toward Latin America. I am also interested in exploring the depth of US xenophobia and racism as it impacts Latinos.
We will have lots of fun revisiting old haunts in San Francisco during the week we will be apartment-sitting for an old friend; greeting giant redwoods of our acquaintance in Sequoia National Park; going through stacks of video tapes of movies that came out in the last year and never got to Oaxaca.
At summer's end, we will return home resupplied, drop our suitcases in our apartment, and stroll down to the Zocalo. We'll sit in one of the sidewalk cafes, order a capuccino or a Negra Modelo, and look around to see who's in town. We'll be home again.
If you have comments or suggestions for Stan, you can contact him at:
http://www.realoaxaca.com/email-realoaxaca.html
